Radiation therapy can be used to treat localized cancer. In a typical application, a radiation delivery system has an ionizing radiation device mounted to a movable gantry. The radiation delivery system controls the motion of the radiation device to direct an ionizing radiation beam to a specific point in space commonly referred to as the “machine isocenter.” One aspect of radiation therapy is positioning a patient so that the patient's tumor is located at the machine isocenter. Patient positioning systems can provide information about the location of the tumor relative to the machine isocenter during patient setup procedures. Patient positioning systems use various technologies to locate the tumor, such as optically locating visual markers applied to the patient's skin, or using X-ray analysis to locate metal fiducials subcutaneously implanted in the patient.
To the extent that conventional patient positioning systems are implemented using software, such software tends to support a single medical application, such as positioning patients for treatment of prostate cancer. Such software further tends to be either (1) monolithic, so that it must be executed on a single computer system having prescribed characteristics, or (2) rigidly distributed, so that each of two or more portions of the software must each be executed on a particular single computer system having prescribed characteristics. Where such software is rigidly distributed, different portions of it are typically designed to communicate in limited predefined ways.
Such software can be difficult to adapt over time, such as to (1) change the manner in which it performs its present medical application, such as changing the technology employed to locate the tumor, or (2) support additional medical applications.
In view of the shortcomings of conventional patient positioning software described above, patient positioning software that is more readily adaptable would have significant utility.